APRS Connect

Android Auto

APRS Connect has an Android Auto screen. Plug the phone into a car that supports Android Auto (or connect wirelessly, if the car does) and APRS Connect appears in the car's app launcher. Opening it shows the map on the car's display, with a small panel beside it and a Send beacon button.

It is the same map as the phone's, not a simplified one. The stations are the stations the phone has heard, filtered by the same view filter as the Map tab; the symbols are the real APRS symbols; trails draw where the Trails layer is on; and the basemap is the app's own, including any offline regions you have downloaded. Nothing is set up separately for the car — whatever the phone shows, the car shows.

What is on the screen

  • The map, filling the display. It follows you until you drag it. The zoom buttons are on the right, with the find me button under them: one press centres the map on you and leaves it there, a second press makes it follow you again. Its icon shows which.
  • Send beacon, the transmitter icon at the top right. One press transmits every enabled beacon over every link it is routed to, exactly as the Beacon now button on the Radio screen does. The car shows the result: "Beacon sent", or the reason it did not go — no callsign, no beacon enabled, no position yet, no link.
  • A status line along the bottom of the map: your callsign, when your last beacon went out, how many stations are on the map, and "RF connected" and "IS connected" for whichever links are up.
  • Tap a station and its card replaces the callsign card while the map stays: what its symbol means and its comment, when it was heard and over which link, its speed and heading if it is moving, how far away it is and in which direction, and the radio it is using and the frequency it announced, where the packet said so. Operator names are not in APRS data, so they are not there. Back, or a tap on empty map, returns to your own card.
  • Options, behind the small card in the corner. The card is Android Auto's own and cannot be removed, so it carries your callsign and one row, Options. Tapping it opens switches for the Stations, Objects and Trails layers — the same switches as the phone map's Layers panel, so a change shows on both — and the theme: Auto, which follows the car's own day and night, or Light or Dark pinned.

By default the car's own day and night setting decides whether the map is drawn light or dark. A phone in light mode on the passenger seat does not get a say about a dashboard after sunset. Options lets you pin Light or Dark if the car decides badly.

The app has to be running on the phone

The car screen is fed by the app on the phone. If the app is not running when the car connects — the phone has restarted, say, or Android closed the app to save memory — the car shows Open APRS Connect on your phone instead of the map. Open the app once and the map appears; you do not need to keep it in the foreground afterwards, and the background link keeps it alive between drives.

Where it comes from

Android Auto only runs a car app that Google Play installed. That is a rule of the platform, not of this app: the Unknown sources switch in Android Auto's developer settings covers media and messaging apps, and Google's own documentation says it does not apply to apps built with the Android for Cars App Library, which this is. An APK installed by hand never appears in the car launcher, however the phone is set up.

So the car screen arrives with the Play release that carries it, once Google's Android Auto review has passed. Testers on the internal track get it the same way, from Play, before that.

What it does not do

  • It does not read or send messages from the car. Messaging in the car is a separate piece of work.
  • It does not run the radio or the APRS-IS connection itself; the phone does, and the car shows what the phone has.
  • Tapping a station on the car's map does not open it. The map is for looking at while you drive; the phone is where you read and reply.
  • Map — everything the map shows, and the layers.
  • Beaconing — what a beacon carries and where it goes.
  • Background and battery — keeping the app alive between drives.

Last updated 7 September 2026

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